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Monday, October 17, 2011
Ind. Gov't. - "Costly microfilm requirement leaves clerk's office 'drowning in paper'"
Dorothy Schneider has the report today in the Lafayette Journal Courier. Some quotes:
"We're just drowning in paper," County Clerk Christa Coffey said.County officials will soon be able to empty one such room, where order books from 2000 to the present are taking up space. Coffey's department will spend roughly $37,600 to have a South Bend company convert the paper images to microfilm -- the only other acceptable permanent storage medium that counties can use to then be allowed to destroy the original documents.
But microfilm conversion for most stored documents is an expensive and unnecessary requirement, Coffey said. The county already scans in documents and stores the images electronically. And those electronic records -- not the paper or microfilm ones -- are what's pulled for reference when needed in nearly every case, Coffey said.
"In my eight years with the clerk's office, I've never come down here and pulled a book," she said Thursday, gesturing to the stacks of records in one room dating to the 1950s.
The state clerk's association has been lobbying officials to change the microfilm requirement, at least for some records. But so far, no changes have been made.
Tom Jones, records manager with the Division of State Court Administration, said microfilm is the standard adhered to by most national and international agencies in cases for which items need to be permanently preserved.
"The problem with digital records is they need constant conversion as processes change," Jones said, adding that there also are concerns about the longevity of such storage mediums.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 17, 2011 09:35 AM
Posted to Indiana Government